WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — It’s not that it’s worth losing sleep over it. It’s just a fact of life that most people in the United States do…and will.
Although it may seem like we just snatched that hour of shut-eye back when we made the annual move to standard time, a lot of people are preparing themselves to return to daylight saving time.
That means there are plenty of people asking: When do we turn the clocks ahead an hour? The answer for 2024: Sunday, March, 10. In case you’re wondering, that’s three weeks before Easter.
If you don’t have to change a clock (we know a lot of people don’t have to do the manual thing), you still will lose that hour of sleep when things switch officially at 2 a.m. (and the time becomes 3 a.m.)
There have been plenty of pushes over the course of many years to put an end to the twice-a-year clock change. In fact, dozens of states had legislation in 2023 that aimed at doing that. They either failed or stalled out in the process.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), which oversees the country’s time zones, also oversees the uniform observance of daylight saving time. The reason USDOT has oversight of the time zones is because time standards are important for many modes of transportation.
USDOT doesn’t have the power to repeal or change daylight saving time. It also doesn’t play a part in a state’s decision to observe daylight saving time. The USDOT’s website explains that states may choose to exempt themselves from observing daylight saving time by state law. They can’t choose to be on permanent daylight saving time.
Congress would have to sign off on an end to the clock changing for the country. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is among federal lawmakers who introduced legislation to do that through his Sunshine Protection Act of 2023.
Neither Hawaii nor Arizona observes daylight saving time. The only exception in Arizona is the Navajo Nation. Additionally, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands do not move their clocks each year.
